Super NES or Sega Genesis?

[RhetroAktive]

I really like both systems but SNES takes it for me just from their library of titles.

[Rob2600]

The Genesis has a 512 color palette, I think one of the most "colorful" games (the most used colors at once) is near 100 with Vector Man for commercially released games (there may be others, but I'm not 100% sure).

As for non-dithered opacity, some sections of Crusaders of Centy/Soleil (depending on which region you're in), as well as Adventures of Batman & Robin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAGXJE1krqY (jump to when the platform starts scrolling, the Cheshire Cat's mouth is static behind the platform, and you can always see it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H17R_eFTCKQ (Jump to 9:30 into the video, and watch as the boss comes onto the screen. Actually, that might be dithering, but still looks really good)

As nice as Vector Man is, I would never consider that a very colorful game. It's quite drab and features a lot of noticeable dithering. Again, nice game, but not a shining example of the Genesis's color palette.

The scrolling track in Adventures of Batman and Robin appears to be a neat programming/art trick, creating the illusion of transparency, but it isn't true transparency. If you notice, the cat's face/smile moves and warps in perspective with the track. The entire checkerboard track/cat face seems to be a flat drawing, cleverly designed to *look* transparent. Kudos to the artists and programmers though for coming up with a good facsimile. I miss the old days of clever programming/art tricks in 2D games.

And the "transparent" bridges in the second video you posted *is* in fact just dithering. To my knowledge, there are no Genesis games that feature true transparency and I don't expect a home game console from the 1980s to be capable of that.

[dra600n]

As nice as Vector Man is, I would never consider that a very colorful game. It's quite drab and features a lot of noticeable dithering. Again, nice game, but not a shining example of the Genesis's color palette.

The scrolling track in Adventures of Batman and Robin appears to be a neat programming/art trick, creating the illusion of transparency, but it isn't true transparency. If you notice, the cat's face/smile moves and warps in perspective with the track. The entire checkerboard track/cat face seems to be a flat drawing, cleverly designed to *look* transparent. Kudos to the artists and programmers though for coming up with a good facsimile. I miss the old days of clever programming/art tricks in 2D games.

And the "transparent" bridges in the second video you posted *is* in fact just dithering. To my knowledge, there are no Genesis games that feature true transparency and I don't expect a home game console from the 1980s to be capable of that.

I agree that Vector Man is a drab colored game, but it still does use close to 100 colors on screen at once in some areas, which was my point in that the Genesis can display a good amount of colors at once. I think Adventures of Batman & Robin, Shining Force, and the Sonic games are perfect examples of using less than 61 colors to achieve beautiful graphics. That's also what I thought about Crusader of Centy after watching it again, but I was on my crappy laptop and it was very crappy with the video playback, so I couldn't tell 100%, thanks for clearing that up.

As for the opacity effect on the scrolling stage, yea, the mouth does move and warp, I'm pretty sure that's due to the tricks to make the platform warp and distort and with limited planes available (the Mad Hatter might not be a sprite, but on a plane, much like the Cheshire Cat boss). I'll see if I can get to that stage in emulation and start turning off layers to see (that game is hard as hell haha).

[tom]

Sonic the Hedgehog, bright colours, blinding speed, punchy music, loop-the-loop, excellent game and so differently fresh than the SMB genre.

[Black_Tiger]

Wow, so many people throwing around such random "facts". :P

So you're saying the SNES is the only one who can use the 256 color palette from the early 90's? Cool story. Genesis has 512 colors. Yes, SNES has more available, but it wasn't the only one.

"Mode 7" can be done on Genesis. In fact, is has been done. That's a moot point.

Sprite scaling and rotating can happen on the Genesis as well, even faster than the SNES if programmed correctly.

Genesis has transparency natively. You're thinking of opacity, which, ironically, the Genesis can also do, and without dithering - it just takes a little bit of creativity.

And yes, you are exaggerating.

ETA: Attached is an opacity demo for the non believer. You can use an emulator provided by the one you get your info from.

ETA #2: There's a demo out there showing it's possible to get over 1,000 colors on screen at once with the Genesis, with the possibility of displaying around 1,300 unique colors at once.

You're taking one spec from SNES and comparing it to a different one for Genesis.

The SNES has 32k colors to choose from, the Genesis has 512 to choose from. The SNES can use up to 8 palettes of 15 colors for sprites and 8 for tiles or a cap of 240 colors onscreen. The Genesis can use 2 palettes for tiles and 2 for sprites which caps out at 60 colors on-screen. But onscreen color counts aren't comparable. A Genesis game with 40 - 50 colors will look worse than a SNES or TG-16 version with the same amount of colors.

The Genesis pulled off a version of one use of Mode 7 once, but it can't do everything in software that Mode 7 does in hardware.

The SNES cannot scale or rotate sprites at all in hardware and likely never does in realtime. The Genesis could do simple scaling and/or rotation in realtime, but there's no point so it's almost always prerendered in 16-bit console games.

Tech demos like that are neat, but mean nothing for games.

As nice as Vector Man is, I would never consider that a very colorful game. It's quite drab and features a lot of noticeable dithering. Again, nice game, but not a shining example of the Genesis's color palette.

The scrolling track in Adventures of Batman and Robin appears to be a neat programming/art trick, creating the illusion of transparency, but it isn't true transparency. If you notice, the cat's face/smile moves and warps in perspective with the track. The entire checkerboard track/cat face seems to be a flat drawing, cleverly designed to *look* transparent. Kudos to the artists and programmers though for coming up with a good facsimile. I miss the old days of clever programming/art tricks in 2D games.

And the "transparent" bridges in the second video you posted *is* in fact just dithering. To my knowledge, there are no Genesis games that feature true transparency and I don't expect a home game console from the 1980s to be capable of that.

There is no such thing as "true" effects in the way you're thinking. Hardware support isn't the only way to do transparencies and the kind the SNES can do is limited, which is why it uses flickering most of the time. The Genesis does have hardware support for shadow/highlight effects, which are hardware supported transparencies. This is how some Genesis games technically display more colors on-screen, but it's not nearly the same thing as having better color. SNES games technically could have hundreds of colors if you count the hardware transparency overlap, but again, those kinds of color counts are meaningless.

Nice to see this all civil and not a whiny fight like a duo of these posts over at NA in the last month.

Here's a spin on it though. If you're rating hardware SuperNES hands down, it came out second, had better parts to work with. The SNES had some incredible capabilities despite having a slower main processor which made up for a lot due to DMA capabilities of the hardware and the chip clock cycles allow more per each moment than the base speedier Genesis. SNES was that first system that allowed for over a VGA level of colors on screen as each layer(of which there's 4) could do 256 colors and from a full run of 32K of them, and could do transparencies, Mode7 scaling and rotation, plus a video mode did high res graphics(Secret of Mana menus), and high color pictures(see Indiana Jones using movie stills.) The sound on it was epic, all using sampled audio and could playback up to 33khz(nearly CD quality) and could run twice the audio channels of the Genesis.

It can't really do 256 colors at once, but it is very much better than Genesis for color. The high res features is pretty much useless and only used in a few screens of a few games. Sonic 2 uses high res for 2 player split screen gameplay. Most Genesis games run at 320 pixels wide res and all SNES games run at 256'ish wide res. The SNES is very much inferior resolution wise. Obviously the channel comment is false and the sample rate doesn't tell the whole story. In practical use, SNES games have to cap the quality or variety of samples and sounds end up muffled and reverbed by the time the SNES spits them out. Genesis also has CD games with CD audio, realtime scaling/rotation, etc. SNES instead sold extra hardware on a cart by cart basis.

The SNES can handle what I said, it's just that games didn't do it with the visuals as I had explained to me by 2 different emulator authors.

Maybe a clever programmer could get 4 tile layers with full color to work, but the SNES isn't supposed to have a mode for that and the most common mode used for layering included a top layer of NES looking graphics.

[RJ]

Which did I hook up to the 42" LCD TV in the family room? SNES

Which did I give to Goodwill months ago & dont miss? Genesis

[BricatSegaFan]

Which did I hook up to the 42" LCD TV in the family room? SNES

Which did I give to Goodwill months ago & dont miss? Genesis

That's a little cold. But to put it in perspective, I have 4 genesis systems and 0 snes. Snes is on the bottom of my list of systems to collect or collect for.

Besides a snes on a modern tv looks like ass, hook that up to a CRT.

[Rob2600]

There is no such thing as "true" effects in the way you're thinking. Hardware support isn't the only way to do transparencies and the kind the SNES can do is limited, which is why it uses flickering most of the time. The Genesis does have hardware support for shadow/highlight effects, which are hardware supported transparencies.

The SNES is capable of additive and subtractive blending to achieve varying levels of transparency (or more accurately, translucency) and many SNES games make use of it. It's far more sophisticated and useful than the Genesis's "shadow and highlight" feature.

And I've never seen translucency/blending in SNES games cause flicker, like you claim. If it did, the forest in A Link to the Past would be unplayable, as would many levels in the Donkey Kong Country series, Super Castlevania IV, Batman Returns, etc.

I've never come across a Genesis game that features true translucency/blending like the clouds and green bubbles in Super Mario World's ghost house...only primitive, dithered transparency like the water in Sonic the Hedgehog. If you know of any Genesis games that do feature SNES-style blending, please post them. I'd love to see them in action.

a snes on a modern tv looks like ass, hook that up to a CRT.

Actually, I hooked my SNES up to my HDTV via composite cable and was surprised to see it looked perfect.

[Tanooki]

Old 2D systems on modern TVs the mileage varies. On my 5-6year old Panasonic 26" Viera LCD the SNES, NES, etc they look much like an emulator in that they're super sharp, no color bleed, it's just crisp and only over a RCA cable clumped all into a switcher box.

That same setup was used on a little over a year old Samsung LED tv about 20" larger than the old one...argh. Did you back in the day ever daisychain like 3+ RF boxes over one coax line? Similar effect, something between that and annoying forced bilinear filtering some emulators in Windows for you to use. Blurry/muddy mess, it's like a dying RF cable mixed in since it bleeds a bit, it's just awful.

Also the old one, I get no input lag and it's a 60hz tv while the new one is 120hz and it does lag enough to make timing precision stuff like a Super Mario game not very playable.

[dra600n]

Wow, so many people throwing around such random "facts". :P




You're taking one spec from SNES and comparing it to a different one for Genesis.

The SNES has 32k colors to choose from, the Genesis has 512 to choose from. The SNES can use up to 8 palettes of 15 colors for sprites and 8 for tiles or a cap of 240 colors onscreen. The Genesis can use 2 palettes for tiles and 2 for sprites which caps out at 60 colors on-screen. But onscreen color counts aren't comparable. A Genesis game with 40 - 50 colors will look worse than a SNES or TG-16 version with the same amount of colors.

The Genesis pulled off a version of one use of Mode 7 once, but it can't do everything in software that Mode 7 does in hardware.

The SNES cannot scale or rotate sprites at all in hardware and likely never does in realtime. The Genesis could do simple scaling and/or rotation in realtime, but there's no point so it's almost always prerendered in 16-bit console games.

Tech demos like that are neat, but mean nothing for games.

The genesis can use all palettes for either background tiles or sprites, there's not 2 dedicated for each.
I'm sure other games have done some mode-7 style effects besides Vector Man's, but even if there aren't (well, Pier Solar did), it's still possible. Some games could really benefit from it, while others would be better off without it (come on, Terranigma's underground is a horrible use of mode-7).

You're right, though. Displaying 960 colors on screen wouldn't necessarily be useful to in game purposes, but you can easily achieve over 200 colors and still have it be useful and feasible in game. The Genesis can't natively rotate or scale sprites. You can flip them horizontally and vertically, but not say, 90 degrees. You could do it through software, but not through native hardware. You can stretch and "rotate", to a degree, with using raster effects on the planes, but only so far before you're better off using pre rendered graphics, like you said.

I thought mode-7 allowed for hardware scaling and rotation, like when you defeat the Koopa boys (and girl) in SMW, when they expand and shrink. I was always under the impression that was done using mode 7, and on the fly.

[j_factor]

Red Zone is another Genesis game with rotation. The game rotates as you turn. Sprites move with the rotation of the screen, which you don't see with Mode 7 on SNES. Mode 7 games are usually completely flat.

[7th lutz]

Space Dungeon and recently released Tempest are not available on 7800. Pac Man never came out on the 7800.

It is true that Pac-Man didn't on the 7800 during the 7800's commercial release, but it on the 7800 as a homebrew game.
Pac-Man is on Pac-Man Collection for the 7800.

[Tanooki]

I thought mode-7 allowed for hardware scaling and rotation, like when you defeat the Koopa boys (and girl) in SMW, when they expand and shrink. I was always under the impression that was done using mode 7, and on the fly.

If I remember reading it right many years ago, they do just that. Mode7 allows that scaling and rotation on one of its BG layers. So to pull off what they did with the koopa kids was to have them not on the usual BG layer that Mario and enemies are on, but they're on an actual background layer instead. Notice when you battle them the area is in a frame, nothing in the background at all, and then it's usually a border or a floating platform over lava? They're using that other BG for them so they move them around as if they were a sprite on the bg, but then when you slap them around some and they take damage or eventually eat it at the end they'll shrink, expand, rotate and fly off screen.

[Black_Tiger]

The genesis can use all palettes for either background tiles or sprites, there's not 2 dedicated for each.

That is not true. You only have to look at the games. If Genesis games could display <64 colors however they like, they would look as good as or better than SNES games and there wouldn't be any of the gaudy color clashing, loss of shading or excessive dithering found in too many Genesis games.

The SNES is capable of additive and subtractive blending to achieve varying levels of transparency (or more accurately, translucency) and many SNES games make use of it. It's far more sophisticated and useful than the Genesis's "shadow and highlight" feature.

That's true, but s&h is still a hardware translucency/transparency effect that the Genesis does have and it's used in games the same way that many SNES games like Chrono Trigger use hardware transparecy: to overlay a single color tint to sections.

And I've never seen translucency/blending in SNES games cause flicker, like you claim. If it did, the forest in A Link to the Past would be unplayable, as would many levels in the Donkey Kong Country series, Super Castlevania IV, Batman Returns, etc.

The hardware supported transparency effect that the SNES has is limited to a single tile layer and has other limits, such as the degrees of translucency. It's also limited to a blending of layers, even though it is often used for effects that should turn things into different color scales. Most SNES transparent sprite effects are done with flickering and it is very common. Sprites taking damage in many/most games use flicker effects. Fire up any SFII and watch Dhalsim's yoga flame. Megaman X Dr Light hologram. Super Metroid elevator. Final Fantasy II opening with wizards dying in the crystal room. SNES games do it all the time.

I've never come across a Genesis game that features true translucency/blending like the clouds and green bubbles in Super Mario World's ghost house...only primitive, dithered transparency like the water in Sonic the Hedgehog. If you know of any Genesis games that do feature SNES-style blending, please post them. I'd love to see them in action.

SNES-style blending isn't perfect or true transparency, it's only a specific kind of non-dithered/non-flickered transparent effect. Still, many Genesis and PC Engine games have transparency/translucent effects that SNES games used hardware support for, as well as other transparency/translucent effects that the SNES hardware transpsarency can't do. Here are some Genesis examples:


Ranger-X: red full screen tint fading in and out plus full screen darkening and lightening effects. Stage 2 light beam in the tunnels. Stage 3 darkening/lightening as you descend/ascend from the forest canopy. Stage 5 rotating transparent light beams. Other full screen lightening/darkening effects. I believe that light beams and full screen colored effects work at the same time, unlike SNES hardware transparency like the shadows in Chrono Trigger that disappear every time another transparency effect is used.


Castlevania Bloodlines: Stage 2 rising water. Stage 5-2 light beams.


Adventures of Batman & Robin: Mad Hatter boss fight floor.


Ristar: Hammerhead shark boss fight.


Animaniacs: Stage 2(?) water.


The Great Circus Mystery Starring Mickey and Minnie: Stage 5.

[LimitedEditionMuseum]

That is not true. You only have to look at the games. If Genesis games could display <64 colors however they like, they would look as good as or better than SNES games and there wouldn't be any of the gaudy color clashing, loss of shading or excessive dithering found in too many Genesis games.














That's true, but s&h is still a hardware translucency/transparency effect that the Genesis does have and it's used in games the same way that many SNES games like Chrono Trigger use hardware transparecy: to overlay a single color tint to sections.





The hardware supported transparency effect that the SNES has is limited to a single tile layer and has other limits, such as the degrees of translucency. It's also limited to a blending of layers, even though it is often used for effects that should turn things into different color scales. Most SNES transparent sprite effects are done with flickering and it is very common. Sprites taking damage in many/most games use flicker effects. Fire up any SFII and watch Dhalsim's yoga flame. Megaman X Dr Light hologram. Super Metroid elevator. Final Fantasy II opening with wizards dying in the crystal room. SNES games do it all the time.





SNES-style blending isn't perfect or true transparency, it's only a specific kind of non-dithered/non-flickered transparent effect. Still, many Genesis and PC Engine games have transparency/translucent effects that SNES games used hardware support for, as well as other transparency/translucent effects that the SNES hardware transpsarency can't do. Here are some Genesis examples:


Ranger-X: red full screen tint fading in and out plus full screen darkening and lightening effects. Stage 2 light beam in the tunnels. Stage 3 darkening/lightening as you descend/ascend from the forest canopy. Stage 5 rotating transparent light beams. Other full screen lightening/darkening effects. I believe that light beams and full screen colored effects work at the same time, unlike SNES hardware transparency like the shadows in Chrono Trigger that disappear every time another transparency effect is used.


Castlevania Bloodlines: Stage 2 rising water. Stage 5-2 light beams.


Adventures of Batman & Robin: Mad Hatter boss fight floor.


Ristar: Hammerhead shark boss fight.


Animaniacs: Stage 2(?) water.


The Great Circus Mystery Starring Mickey and Minnie: Stage 5.

I never cuss but how in the FUCK do you guys know all this stuff!!!!!!!????? It's amazing.

[Casati]

Time to set the record straight, the SNES can't exactly handle it's 512 horizonal pixles resolutions, aka it's high resolution modes, most of the Super NES games are running at it's 256 horizontal pixles resolutions [low resolution modes] to keep the framerate high, thats why games that are on both systems, sprites tend to look "bigger" on the SNES, because the games have to run in low resolution compared to the Sega Genesis, which most of the Genesis' game library runs in it's high resolution mode [320 hotizontal pixles], hence the reason the modle 1's had the "High Definition Graphics" emblem across it's top.

Sega Genesis could display "SNES quality" colors via dithering techniques and highlight/shadowing tricks, also the Sega Genesis could display 2-3 times the sprites and independently scrolling 2D planes over the SNES and games on the Genesis typically ran with less slowdown, featured faster scrolling levels. Sega Genesis also featured more custom special effects like "tilted" sprites and backgrounds, scaling backgrounds, realtime scaling sprites and fully polygonal gameplay all in software coding without any special cart loaded processors. So yeah, the Sega Genesis could outclass the Super NES graphically.

As for sound, there are literally hundreds of Genesis games that show off exactly the full capabilities of it's FM synth music, even with very clear PCM sound samples that don't sound gargled at all. Unfortunately, Konami and Capcom never did really grasp the amazing Genesis sound chip capabilities for PCM sound, however games such as Robocop vs. Terminator have alot of sound samples and they are crystal clear.

I mean the sound system is truely one of the most misunderstood and under rated qualities of the Sega Genesis, the Genesis sound chips had amazing capabilities that do out class the SNES sound when programmed by a competent composer and when programmed for correctly it truely outshined the SNES sound chip on all levels.

Sound quality of course depends on what modle of the Genesis you get as well, the "High Defintion Graphics" modle 1 Sega Genesis' have the best sound. Non-High Defintiion Graphics modle 1 Sega Genesis' have bad sound, as do the Modle 2 and Modle 3 Genesis'. All of those "fake" Sega Genesis modles you can buy get the sound wrong too. Also sound on emulators is horrible as well, the best and most accurate sound when it comes to emulators is when using the emulator Kega Fusion and setting sound to SuperHQ. I mean it's not perfect but it's very close to actual hardware, all other emulators flat out get it wrong.

As for the Super Nintendo, know why so many SNES musical scores use reverb for it's music samples? Because it would sound like crap otherwise, it would be flat, lifeless and muffled sounding. SNES music was sampled [it's NOT wavetable as so many believe], it's sampled sound, simular to Amiga MOD tunes. If you listen to the music carefully on the SNES even underneath music that has reverb you can hear how badly the sound is muffled. Its sound chip IS inferior, it looks awesome on paper but in use, it's actually pretty horrible.

I'm not a "fanboy", I have enjoyed both the Sega Genesis and the Super NES since they debuted, and all throughout the 90's I have enjoyed them both and both have amazing exclusives and so I have respect for both system.

Sega Genesis was the better, more powerful console all around though.

Here's an argument for the Sega Genesis by Phaytal Error on YouTube.

[Tanooki]

Yeah it's an argument based upon opinion with some facts thrown around in there, shame few retail games back that up. Conveniently some of the competent big designers somehow just 'didn't get it' which I find really hard to believe with what they did pull off on both those systems and others including the arcade.


It's an old thread though and fun to read through to see both sides go at it.

[MidnightRider]

I remember not too long ago I was playing Japan/Euro exclusive Alien Soldier, and I kept thinking how the "Ready? Fight!" during boss battles was so clear it actually reminded me of Dreamcast fighting games.

Then there's the fact that the Street Fighter games have been hacked, with nothing but adjusted code, to sound much clearer than that congested sound Capcom got on the Genesis.

So yeah, there is a bit of truth to "the competent big designers" not getting it. Especially since before ~'92 it was Sega themselves porting Capcom games to the Genesis, and Konami still hadn't done anything for a console that had been out since '88, while they had something ready for the Super Famicom in '90. Pretty obvious these 2 companies had favoritism toward the big N.

[Tanooki]

THat's clear those two really had it in for Nintendo in their love affair. It rolled from original 8bit subjugation into whatever occurred that made them want to goo their pants over the Gameboy and the Super Famicom simultaneously. Maybe it was the overall capabilities of the SNES to emulate the color and audio depth of what they were wanting to do in arcades at the time, bribes, backroom deals whatever but Sega got the shit from them. Konami never really gave them a break over than the contra, turtles and castlevania single releases and they weren't exactly blown up to get attention like the SNES stuff. Capcom was marginally worse as they I think pretty much just shoveled over SF2 games, but kind of made up for it in the Saturn and DC era with a crap ton of decent arcade ports.

I'm in no way anti-Sega, I just don't have their hardware anymore currently due to lack of time/resources, but I really did like certain things the Genesis, Saturn and DC had going for it. I've been scaling back a lot for the last decade, more furiously this year than many though.

[Alianger]

From what I've seen, the MD displays 171 colors in Toy Story (stills; 105 in-game), 88 colors in Vectorman (stage 1), and 82 colors in Lost World: Jurassic Park (chopper stage).

Here's an album with screenshots from various games where they show the most colors at once (from what I've seen, some might show more in other places). Check photo details for color counts:
https://plus.google.com/photos/11050...38458871073537

This YT video shows the Toy Story and Vectorman examples in a dramatic presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9rjw...wDFq12zEkX1XMA

An interesting comment on the vid: ''Problem is, that the amount of colors per frame is irrelevant. You can change color palettes from one frame to another or even mid-frame and introduce a flickering effect, which the human eye will not notice because it is too slow to realize this, hence you actually see more. There is a theoretical thing: Every Horiz. INT you get enough cycles to change 3 CRAM words. This would mean that you can display 61 + 3 * 232 colors in total, if I'm correct (THEORETICALLY)''

There's probably some recent demos or homebrew games that surpass these examples as well.